OpenText UFT Developer Reviews

We use UFT Pro together with other test organization tools. There are many testers or developers that are not used to UFT. They haven't been using it in many other places. But when they've been working with it for a while and they see the complexity when you're doing real and tough test situations, then they see that this kind of tool is very, very good.

The benefit is the ability to find and create different objects.

The tool is not the problem. The problem is that we can't get the tool working, because there are other issues. We had a meeting with all the banks and several customers had the same problems. There should be a smarter and quicker way to upgrade UFT Pro.

It must be on the roadmap now, because they really lost with Mobile Center when they released a new version and it was not backwards compatible. It's not very easy for big companies to provision new versions. We have 38,000 PCs in organization, and we're not allowed to do anything on them. Everything has to be taken step-by-step. It does have a learning curve.

The stability of UFT Pro is much better now. It was a little bit slow with hanging on with your techniques, with your browsers and all of that. Very often, they opened a browser, and suddenly UFT didn't work. 

We are not allowed to be admin on our machines. We have to distribute out applications and that's a problem every time there is a new version of UFT. How do we do an MSI patch and what are they writing in that register? What is needed to be opened in that directory? And so on.

We bought small, five-license versions of Test Director from Mercury in 2007 and it has continuously grown since then. Today, we have 600 users and 130 active projects. The environment gets bigger and bigger all of the time.

The first time we installed was a long, long time ago. It's complicated to upgrade.

I would say the most valuable is that we can get people started off really quickly on solutions because we've been partners with HPE for a long time and it helps us tailor the product to ours needs. When we have issues with something we can get support directly from HPE since we paid for it.

The fact that it works with a vast number of technologies works for us because our internal customers use the tool for testing a lot of different applications. That's probably the best feature that it has for us.

There's a lot of centralized testing from some perspectives and our main goal is to provide for a bunch of different groups at a lower cost so we centralize licensing and distribute it to various people. The biggest benefit of that is that it allows us to empower the people that need the solutions instead of manually having them develop the solutions on their own.

LeanFT could support additional technologies because we use it for a lot more than just web and Java and some Windows apps. Further support for other technologies would be nice. I can't rattle any off the top of my head but ones that we use internally.

We don't scale it out on as large of a basis as ALM.

Our biggest issue was in the switch over from HP Inc. to HPE. I think we had some trouble getting in touch with higher level support so we spent a lot of time going through basic support where the people that work with the tools have a lot of experience with the tools. We think that it would be better if we could bypass the lowest levels of support on some issues. I can understand the process that we usually have to go through but more recently our reps have been helpful in getting us to the people that we need quicker so we can get a resolution.

I'd say to set it up it's pretty easy. Defining a standardized way that everyone could use it is a little bit harder. It's a very complex tool, there's a lot of ways to use it so I don't know if it's a limitation of the tool per say as just a common industry problem. I wouldn't say that there's anything that made it hard to get to the customers and to start utilizing it.

It's newer so it doesn't support as many technologies which makes the investment a little bit harder for us to absorb more licenses than we currently have or to justify buying any more licenses than we currently have because it only supports a certain subset of our customers.

LeanFT is used a lot more by our less experienced testers and developers who want to get more point-and-click type automation. Then obviously I also manage the automation team, so we use UFT for a ton of all of our XLC automation as well as anything with a UI. So we also bring it into our business functions as well. If we need to do clean-up, data entry, management of manual tasks where you're putting yourself in a UI scenario, we'll run scripts for that for productivity.

We pretty much use that to streamline workflow and enable productivity in a business context in our business unit as well as in our IT shop, so just reducing workload on IT people as well as testing. It's used pretty extensively beyond that.

I'd like to not have to use Selenium. I'd like to be able to do headless scripting and not just always be UI serving.

It's stable.

We're already at enterprise scale, so it's used across the enterprise. I would say that we're at that point.

I have an entire team, so I'm a director and I have an entire tools team that does that. I did get involved in the planning and the strategy of how we're going to do it. My team said that first installation is relatively easy. When we go to upgrade and migrate, that's where there's pain.

We're still trying to get the adoption on that for the user community. It's very usable though. I rate adoption pretty high, so when people are using it, for instance, UFT, I'd definitely give that a ten because we use that a lot. I'd like to see some enhancements in the product, and we're working with HPE on that.

Have a well-defined process, have a strong reporting structure, meaning in your process you want a lot of measurability. If you define your output, the reports and the questions you need to answer from what you're doing, which your process should be managing for you. In our company, we are very specific about what our executives and stakeholders want.

We have a very well-defined set of measurements that we have to take. We then put a process designed to ensure those measurements are always taken. That then allows you to deal with your outputs and your reporting structure, which then allows you to properly architect your tooling. The technology is very flexible. You have to decide as a client area how you really want to use it and that's going to start with what your business needs are the values that you're trying to get out of it.

That's the biggest advice that I have, it's not even on the technology. The technology will do great things for you if you have a plan and a structure and you know what you want it to do for you. Half the time they don't know, they want the tool to do it for them and it's the other way around. So that's what I advise people to do.

Think about it, have a vision, have a plan, tie that to outcomes, and measure those outcomes. If you're answering the right questions and asking the right questions, your technology will really enable you. You've got to look at it from that standpoint.

I primarily use this solution for the automation of regression testing in SAP.

The most valuable feature is stability.

This is a script-based tool and the usability needs to be improved.

Easier connectivity and integration with SAP would be helpful.

In the future, I would like to see module-based tests instead of scripting.

I have been working with UFT for about one year.

The stability is quite good and we haven't had any issues.

Scalability is not an issue except that you need to create quite a few scripts. It is not easy to just create new test cases for new solutions. When you have to consider other solutions or applications then it's a bit tricky.

The number of people using the UFT application is quite limited, at perhaps three or four. However, there are a couple of hundred people responsible for performing the tests it creates.

I would rate the technical support as okay, but not better. There are bugs between UFT and HTLM that they have not been able to solve. 

The initial setup is complex because of the integrations. A lot of knowledge is required to do the scripting, we did not have it, and it is difficult to find. Our deployment took about two months.

A consultant assisted us with the deployment and we were satisfied with the service.

Ultimately, due to the scripting, integration, and other functionality that is missing, we may switch to another solution in the future.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.

I believe the main feature for using it is the flexibility across different platforms. For example, I can use it whether it's Eclipse using any of the programming languages. The multi-platform usage of LeanFT is really useful.

It's still in the early days, but still I see that we'll move over to it fore the effort savings once the LeanFT roadmap comes into place.

It needs to be able to be used on Chrome, Firefox, and other browsers on Macs and not just Safari. That's a very key requirement for my organization.

It's very scalable. Given the power that it provides in terms of any programming language and any development platform you can use it on, such as Eclipse or any ID platform. So definitely it's more scalable but still there will be room for improvement in terms of the Mac browsers compatibility/support.

We hardly have incidents. There hasn't been much activity as compared to UFT. We will see how it goes in the future.

The complexity was pretty much okay, it's acceptable, so that was good. Once you implement the infrastructure within the organization, the complexity is pretty much similar to any other automation tool.

We didn't actually choose it. Our customers provide LeanFT, so we started using it.

We're still early on with our use but there are a lot of good things that have been promised. Those results have to be realized now. What has been told so far as well as the roadmap which I have been told should come into place pretty quickly.

I like the tool because we can still access the devices' distance. It's not important where you're working. For example, I can use it in Brazil, Chile, and other parts where people are working. After the pandemic, many companies use it for homework. I think using it to administer and manage the devices is very good and effective.

Stability depends on the company's infrastructure and end-to-end infrastructure. When I used the tool in my project, we had a big problem with many users using it simultaneously.

I have been working with the product for three years. 

I rate OpenText UFT Developer an eight out of ten. I recommend it, but you must prepare the environment and infrastructure before applying the tool. You need to scan with user growth in mind. We needed to set up the environment to use it.

We are an IT-based company. We have our own product. I am primarily using Micro Focus UFT Developer for SAP applications such as SAP ECC and SAP HANA.

It is quite stable, and it has got very user-friendly features, which are important in terms of maintaining our scripts from a long-term perspective. It is very stable for desktop-based, UI-based, and mobile applications. Object repositories and other features are also quite good.

UFT Developer is good, but it requires high-level development skills. Scripting is something that everybody should know to be able to work with this product. Currently, it is very development intensive, and you need to know various scripting languages. It would be good if the development effort could be cut short, and it can be scriptless like Tosca. It will help in more adoption because not every team has people with a software engineering background. If it is scriptless, the analysts who wear multiple hats and come from different backgrounds can also use it in a friendly manner.

It is also quite expensive.

I have been using this solution for ten years.

It is quite stable.

It is quite scalable. It can be used for multiple applications. It doesn't only cater to SAP applications. It can also be used for UI-based applications and mobile applications.

We have started with five developer licenses, and we are planning to have more licenses in place for more application automation.

It is deployed directly on my desktop. 

Its cost is a bit high. From the licensing perspective, I am using a concurrent license. It is not a seed license. It is something that I can use in our network. It can also be used by other users. 

It is a great tool. It is not really rocket science. Once you learn it, you can easily adopt it.

I would rate Micro Focus UFT Developer an eight out of ten.

Our primary use at this time is mainly to automate testing of Windows and web-based GUIs.

The recording feature is quite good as it helps us to find out how things are working. 

There is quite a bit of room for improvement. As time has gone on the product has failed to improve. Basically, Micro Focus' UFT (Unified Functional Testing) was a good product 15 years ago when it was first introduced. They have not really made substantial changes to it since then — which they should have done to make the product more useful and competitive. The gap between it and the competition has shown in the product's lack of development.

To improve the product they could better integrate the API and the GUI testing. At the moment, when you run the GUI testing, you run it in Visual Basic Script — which is a very old Microsoft product that Microsoft no longer supports. For the API testing, you have to write your tests in C# or C++. If you write a functional library for one test process, you can not use the same library with another test. A further problem is that even if you have a functional library written in VBScript, you can not use it for multiple projects. You have to make a copy of the library for each project that you use it with. Then, of course, every time you make a change, you have to replicate the change manually through the different projects and that is a real pain.

A new feature that I would like to see is better integration between the API and the GUI testing so that you could use the same libraries and the same scripting languages and so forth. That is a major missing piece because of their lack of effort in development over time.

The stability of the product is adequate.

When it comes to scalability we never had the opportunity to run UFT in parallel with multiple platforms, so I don't know that the product hits the mark at this point for the type of scalability we would want to test.

We did actually contact the technical support for an issue once. The support was actually quite good. But, honestly, that is what I would expect for a product at this price point.

Micro Focus UFT is an okay solution for specific purposes that we use it for. I also use Katalon Studio and, since Katalon Studios is Java and Groovy-based, it is much better and more up-to-date for testing.

The initial setup was reasonably straightforward. I have no issues there. I don't remember exactly because it was a long time ago, but the setup was not excessively long. It was just like any basic software installation.

We didn't need to use a reseller or a consultant for the implementation. We did it on our own.

As far as comparing to other products, the licensing costs for UFT are very high. I don't remember the cost exactly. The maintenance of the service contract was very high as well and, frankly — compared with more modern tools — it was and is not worth it.

A good thing is that there are not any costs in addition to standard licensing fees, but the standard licensing fees are going to be high in comparison to other products so you don't gain anything.

My advice for those considering this product as a solution is that they should look closely at alternative products to make a good comparison of features, capabilities, and cost. At the moment we are also using a product called Katalon Studio, which is freeware and it does pretty much everything that we want it to do.

The biggest lesson I've learned from using UFT is to compare solutions. I would go so far as to say that even if UFT were free, I would still prefer Katalon Studio.

On a scale from one to ten where ten is the best, I would rate UFT Pro as only a five now. I would rate it so low because over the last 10 or 15 years this product, which was a superior solution at one point, has not really been developed to its capacity.